Desk research & fieldwork

An important distinction in types of research data is the one between primary data,  collected for a certain research, and information from existing sources. In order to collect the first category, researchers need to go into the field (fieldwork), whereas the gathering of information in the second category can be done behind a desk (desk research).

The gathering of data in a field research is always done for a specific research, with a specific research question. The research method, possible questionnaire et cetera, all need to be customized to suit this research. This usually makes the applicability of the research data easier compared to desk research. It is often also more expensive than desk research, because the entire survey has to be shaped by the researcher. However, for many issues a large number of sources are already available, such as socio-economic data.  

As mentioned above, desk research involves gathering data from existing sources. This makes it  less expensive form of research, but at the same time the data are not primarily collected for this specific research question, which makes the interpretation and applicability more difficult. In practice both forms are often used together, because they (can) complement each other nicely.